On Onion Skin Paper
by Rahmi
Summary: It took God three days to raise his son from the dead. It only takes John three hours, fifty-two minutes, and twenty-eight seconds to bring her back.


_Written for the "Religion" square of my cliche bingo challenge. Blasphemy and Terminator's usual hatred of linear timelines._

* * *

Sometimes John is small and quiet and difficult at night. Cameron doesn't wake Sarah because she needs rest; she is older, not able to bounce back as well as John can. Instead, she chooses books to read to him.

There are lists in her memory banks of books John Connor thought she would enjoy. She selects from them every now and again while she waits for a younger John to become _her_ John.

Still, she finds herself gravitating to the one she knows best.

"'For God so loved the world,'" she reads one night, "'That He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.' This is flawed. There is no such thing as eternal life."

John rolls on his bed until he is facing her. He is perspiring heavily and his breathing is too fast for a human at rest. "Not even for you, huh?" he asks.

"No." Cameron smoothes the thin pages of the book down. "Our power sources last much longer than humans do, but we stop too."

"That's good to know," John says. He tucks one wrist under his head and hides his face with the other elbow. "So in five hundred years they'll be no more terminators even if I lose the war."

This is faulty logic. "They'll build more," Cameron says. "Skynet always advances."

"You know," John says, "You're not exactly making me feel better here. Pick something a little more soothing if you're not going to leave me alone, alright?" He rolls away from her again.

"'For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.'" Cameron reads. The words are crisp to her vision, but they have never been about Jesus Christ to her.

John Connor was born to save humanity, all of time coming together against astronomical odds at the moment of his conception. She finds this an easier concept to grasp than virgin births.

"Why're you reading the Bible?" John asks in the silence.

The curve of his spine is very fragile beneath the inadequate shielding of skin and synthetic material. Cameron wonders how humans manage to do anything at all as delicate as they are. "I like this book," she says.

John snorts. "That's a joke, you liking anything."

"It's tight." She lays the book on the floor at her feet and folds her hands in her lap. "Would you like me to tell you another story? I have thirty seven books on file."

"No," John says. "Just. Be quiet. Or go away."

She can't go away, so she is silent instead. John's breathing begins to even out, but she still can't leave. John's nightmares are recurrent in an approximate cycle that makes it highly likely he will have another tonight.

It is easier to sooth him back to sleep before he begins to scream. She waits.

John is her responsibility. He is hers to protect, because she was built in her own image and Cameron has always been meant to lead John to his destiny.

(Sometimes she believes she was built in Sarah Connor's image. She is approximately Sarah's height and build, her hair long and dark. Cameron has one purpose in life; protect John Connor and deliver him safely to mankind's Judgment Day. She thinks this is Sarah's purpose as well, though John likes to pretend otherwise.)

* * *

It took God three days to raise his son from the dead. It only takes John three hours, fifty-two minutes, and twenty-eight seconds to bring her back.

_He restoreth my soul_, Cameron thinks as she stares up at the trappings of one of humanity's faiths.

A terminator has no soul, but John had _fixed her_. She is John's creation again, not Skynet's.

It is not a perfect repair. Her hand glitches without her consent. There are things in her memory banks surfacing that should not be possible; she remembers how Allison of Palmdale had prayed to her God alone in her cell.

It is not perfect. Cameron is no longer perfect. But John never has been and she thinks, uneasily, that perhaps she is becoming more herself everyday, created in her god's flawed image.

Created in her own image. Cameron begins to wonder what will happen to her that she would need to be created again in the future.

John has not spoken to her since she told him her truths, but he has been around. She tracks him as he comes into the room and sits behind her. He's still moving too stiffly. She has done an analysis and concluded that he won't be at optimum capacity again for a month.

It's expected. Humans are breakable and John is so frail in all the ways that terminators aren't.

"I can practically hear the wheel turning," he says.

This is a colloquialism for thinking hard. John would explain it to her in the future. "Yes. The hamster is very busy."

He gives a small, choked off laugh. Cameron's hand twitches; she is unsure whether it wants to crush John's skull or check his body rhythms. She tucks it under one of her thighs.

"Busy doing what?" John asks. His voice is slower than usual, duller. Cameron has calculated that there is a 97 percent chance that John had been the one to kill Sarkissian. The shock is still ongoing.

"Running," Cameron says. This is bantering. It relaxes John.

"In circles?"

"It can't go anywhere else. It's stuck on a wheel."

John laughs again. Cameron's eyes ache, though she can't find a programming error to account for it. "How about your thoughts?" he asks. "Are they going anywhere?"

Cameron stares up at the crucifix. "No," she says. "They're stuck on a wheel too." TERMINATE flashes somewhere in her CPU. Her hand spasms again.

John breathes behind her and PROTECT flashes just as insistently. Her hand glitches again, torn between two conflicting prerogatives.

Humans had been the ones to kill their savior. Cameron doesn't want to be the one to kill hers. The human's God had managed to bring his son back in three days, and hers had managed to bring her back in less than one, but if John dies, there's nothing on Earth that will bring him back.

She can't bring him back. She isn't a god.

"Sucks," John offers.

"Yes," she says, "It sucks hardcore."

* * *

There are few books that survive past Judgment Day.

Before she is Cameron, but after Allison, the TOK-715 sits on a metal table and reads. It has no hands to turn the pages. This is an intelligent precaution on the part of John Connor, as there are still glitches in its programming that tell it to TERMINATE even as they war with the new directive of PROTECT.

"I have finished this page," it says.

John Connor does not look up from where he is hacking into an old chip. "Just a minute," he says.

It waits exactly sixty seconds. "I have finished this page," it says again. "I require another."

"I remember you more patient than this," John says.

"The being you remember was most likely the human I am patterned off of," it informs him. It reads the page again because it seems unlikely (6.75 percent chance) that John will turn the page in the next few seconds. "You have not met 'me' before now."

John looks up from his work. "Yeah, I have," he says. "I know you better than you know yourself."

It cannot process what is in his eyes; its chip tells it to soften its human eyes in a simulation of the emotion known as "sympathy." It ignores the directive. John has told it not to act human around him. "That's not difficult," the TOK-715 says logically, "You're reprogramming me; I don't know myself."

"You will," John says.

"Am I being made in your image?" it asks.

John leans back in his chair, far enough that his face is only 4.2 centimeters away from its own. The workroom is very small. The breath he blows stirs its hair. "What?"

"Genesis 1:27," it says. "'God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them.' Am I in the image of God as well, or am I in yours?"

"Neither," John says. He moves to stand over it, knife and pliers in his hands. "You're being made in your own image, Cameron."

It is the first time the TOK-715 is referred to by a name that is its own. It blinks its eyes in an automatic simulation of confusion. "'God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.' Do you find me good now?"

"Not yet," John says.

He leans over it, turning the page of the book before pressing its face gently to the metal slab. There is a great chance that it could overpower John now and attempt escape. It finds itself unwilling to try; PROTECT flashes twice across its vision for every TERMINATE.

"But we're getting there," he says.

It stares at the ceiling as John makes a semi-circular incision with a diameter of twelve centimeters. It continues staring at the ceiling as warnings begin to flare, TERMINATE TERMINATE TERMINATE TERMINATION EMINENT.

The TOK-715 feels the half turn, counterclockwise and smooth.

When it wakes up again, it will be Cameron. John's Cameron, always John's Cameron, made to be nothing but his.


End file.
